The Wonders of the Honeybee: A Marvel of Nature

Among all insects, the bee stands out as one of the most intriguing, thanks to its extraordinary lifestyle and the honey it produces for us.

Bees spend most of their lives in the hive with their fellow bees, engaging in remarkably efficient and thriving social activities. At the top of the hierarchy is one bee, the queen, while the rest are all workers, who are also females. However, their egg-laying organs are undeveloped, preventing them from laying eggs. The queen bee is distinguishable by her longer body, measuring up to 17 millimeters, whereas a worker bee's body measures only 13 millimeters.

The queen bee, who acts as the mother, is constantly busy laying eggs day and night. She moves over the honeycomb cells, accompanied and fed by a retinue of worker bees. Once she finds an empty cell, she dips her head inside to inspect it. If deemed suitable for laying, she deposits her abdomen into it and lays a single elongated white egg, which sticks to one end of the cell's floor. The queen averages laying about 1,000 to 2,000 eggs per day.

From Egg to Larva

Each honeybee begins life as a whitish-gray egg, resembling a small dot about 1.5 millimeters long. Three days after the egg is laid, it hatches into a worm-like larva. Worker bees tirelessly feed this larva, providing it with up to a thousand meals in just 24 hours. This intense feeding results in rapid growth. Initially, all larvae are fed a food known as "royal jelly," a cream-like substance rich in protein, manufactured in the salivary glands of young worker bees. After two to three days, workers switch the diet of future worker bees to a mixture of honey and pollen called "bee bread," while those destined to become queens continue to be fed royal jelly.

A few days later, bees seal the larva's cell with wax. The cell of a larva destined to become a queen is sealed when it is five days old. A would-be worker's cell is sealed at six days, while a male is sealed at seven.

Surrounding its body with a fine silk cocoon, the larva transforms into a pupa. This stage lasts eight days for a queen, twelve days for a worker, and fourteen days for males. During this time, the pupa metamorphoses into an adult bee. Once developed, the young bee chews through the cocoon and emerges into the world.

The Queen

When a young queen emerges from her cocoon, her first task is to eliminate her competitors—both the older queen and any young queens that emerged alongside her. She stings and expels them from the hive to establish her reign. In these struggles, the defeated queens are forced to abandon the hive, accompanied by some of the worker bees.

Daily, the queen is occupied solely with egg-laying, which is her only duty in life. Worker bees always surround her to feed and serve her.

The Worker

Soon after a worker bee emerges from its cell, it starts a life of hard work, laboring tirelessly until its last day. Its initial responsibility is cleaning empty cells in preparation for egg-laying. By the time it is three days old, it begins to feed the larvae and pupae still developing in their cells. Some young workers guard the hive entrance to prevent intruding pests, while others stand near the entrance and rapidly flap their wings to ventilate the hive.

After two to three weeks of orientation flights to familiarize themselves with short distances outside the hive, young workers begin collecting nectar. Over the course of their lives, most of their days are occupied with gathering nectar.

The Nectar Dance

Bees have a unique method of communication to announce the discovery of a food source. Upon finding an area rich in nectar flowers, a bee performs a dance. This dance signals other bees to join her in the area she has found. If the nectar source is close to the hive, the bee fills her belly with nectar and, upon returning to the hive, performs a circular dance. To indicate that the nectar source is further away, she performs a figure-eight waggle dance. These dance movements convey to other bees the direction and distance of the food from the hive with great precision!

Apart from nectar and pollen, bees also collect a resin called propolis, found in certain tree buds. Some workers, tasked with maintaining the hive, use this sticky substance to repair any splits in the comb walls.

During summer, worker bees spend nearly all daylight hours collecting food. Workers born during times of abundant nectar and pollen typically labor until they die in about two months. However, those born in autumn may live through the winter, with a lifespan of 8-9 months.

The End of the Sting

The worker bee's weapon is its stinger, which it uses to defend the hive from insects and larger animals trying to steal the sweet honey.

The stinger is located at the rear of the bee's abdomen and is approximately one-third the length of its body. A worker's stinger is straight, barbed at its end, preventing it from being withdrawn after embedding in soft flesh. After stinging a human or large animal, the worker bee dies because it cannot detach from its victim without tearing part of its abdomen.

Bees sting only rarely—when attacked, or when compelled to protect the hive. When a bee stings a hard-bodied insect, it can extract its stinger without injury. The venom is highly potent, killing flies, small insects, and various vertebrates instantly.

Unlike the worker bee, the queen's stinger is smooth, allowing her to sting repeatedly without harming her abdomen!

The Honey

While the bee itself is not kosher and cannot be eaten, its honey is pure and permissible to consume (for detailed explanations see the adjoining article). Besides being a nutritious and healthy sugar source, honey possesses numerous medicinal attributes: it strengthens the heart muscle, increases red blood cell count, and is used to treat bladder and kidney infections, as well as a salve for wounds and burns. Honey contains antibacterial, antiviral, and antifungal properties, making it an efficient alternative to antibiotics, whose effectiveness is declining due to widespread and uncontrolled use. Additionally, among populations that consume honey instead of refined sugar, diabetes rates are significantly lower.

Honey is the only natural product with an unlimited shelf life. A few years ago, jars of honey were discovered atop Egyptian pyramids, preserved for about 3,000 years without spoiling.

Just as Hashem blessed sweet honey never to spoil, so may we all be blessed with a good and fruitful year where sweetness endures for many days and years!